Quotes by Carl Jung
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We are so accustomed to the apparently rational nature of our world that we can scarcely imagine anything happening that cannot be explained by common sense. The primitive man confronted by a shock of this kind would not doubt his sanity; he would think of fetishes, spirits or gods.

I am the triple owner of the world, the finest Turkey, the Lorelei, Germania and Helvetia of exclusively sweet butter and Naples, and I must supply the whole world with macaroni.

The dream is a series of images, which are apparently contradictory and nonsensical, but arise in reality from psychologic material which yields a clear meaning.

One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is.

At times I feel as if I am spread out over the landscape and inside things, and am myself living in every tree, in the plashing of the waves, in the clouds and the animals that come and go, in the procession of the seasons.

Active imagination requires a state of reverie, half-way between sleep and waking.

The seat of faith, however, is not consciousness but spontaneous religious experience, which brings the individual's faith into immediate relation with God.

The general function of dreams is to try to restore our psychological balance by producing dream material that re-establishes, in a subtle way, the total psychic equilibrium.

We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.

If we feel our way into the human secrets of the sick person, the madness also reveals its system, and we recognize in the mental illness merely an exceptional reaction to emotional problems which are not strange to us. -- The Content of the Psychoses.

A book of mine is always a matter of fate. There is something unpredictable about the process of writing, and I cannot prescribe for myself any predetermined course.

Projection of our own shadow makes the whole world a replica of our own unknown face.

The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our shadow onto others.

A residual sea of symbols which is shared by all mankind, usually accessed through dreams or altered states, and from which cultures draw images on which to found their religions.

The psyche is a natural phenomenon. All aspects of the psyche, even those which seem pathological or destructive, actually serve the function of furthering our psychological development.

It is astounding that man, the instigator, inventor and vehicle of all these developments, the originator of all judgements and decisions and the planner of the future, must make himself such a quantité negligeable.

I think that one should view with philosophic admiration the strange paths of the libido and should investigate the purposes of its circuitous ways.

One might expect, perhaps, that a man full of genius could pasture in the greatness of his own thoughts, and renounce the cheap approbation of the crowd which he despises; yet he succumbs to the more powerful impulse of the herd instinct. His searching and his finding, his call, belong to the herd.

To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real.

To ask the right question is already half the solution of a problem.

Man can try to name love, showering upon it all the names at his command, and still he will involve himself in endless self deceptions. If he possesses a grain of wisdom he will lay down his arms and name the unknown by the more unknown -- ignotum per ignotius -- that is by the name of God.

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life's morning.

The principle aim of psychotherapy is not to transport one to an impossible state of happiness, but to help (the client) acquire steadfastness and patience in the face of suffering.

I know only that I was born and exist, and it seems to me that I have been carried along. I exist on the foundation of something I do not know. In spite of all uncertainties, I feel a solidity underlying all existence and a continuity in my mode of being.

For a woman, the typical danger emanating from the unconscious comes from above, from the spiritual sphere personified by the animus, whereas for a man it comes from the chthonic realm of the world and woman, i.e., the anima projected on to the world.

We can hardly escape the feeling that the unconscious process moves spiral-wise round a centre, gradually getting closer, while the characteristics of the centre grow more and more distinct.

Man and woman become a devil to each other when they do not separate their spiritual paths, for the nature of created beings is always the nature of differentiation.

No matter what the world thinks about religious experience, the one who has it possesses a great treasure, a thing that has become for him a source of life, meaning, and beauty, and that has given a new splendor to the world and to mankind.

It is proverbial, of course, that man never learns from history, and, as a rule, in respect to a problem of the present, it can teach us simply nothing. The new must be made through untrodden regions, without suppositions, and often, unfortunately, without piety also.

The teacher pretended that algebra was a perfectly natural affair, to be taken for granted, whereas I didn't even know what numbers were. Mathematics classes became sheer terror and torture to me. I was so intimidated by my incomprehension that I did not dare to ask any questions.

Only a few individuals succeed in throwing off mythology in a time of a certain intellectual supremacy -- the mass never frees itself.

You can exert no influence if you are not susceptible to influence.

The divine process of change manifests itself to our human understanding ... as punishment, torment, death, and transfiguration.

The totality of the psyche can never be grasped by the intellect alone.

No language exists that cannot be misused... Every Interpretation is hypothetical, for it is a mere attempt to read an unfamiliar text.

All true things must change and only that which changes remains true.

The upheaval of our world and the upheaval in consciousness is one and the same. Everything becomes relative and therefore doubtful. And while man, hesitant and questioning, contemplates... his spirit yearns for an answer that will allay the turmoil of doubt and uncertainty.

The unconscious mind of man sees correctly even when conscious reason is blind and impotent.

In the products of the unconscious we discover mandala symbols, that is, circular and quaternity figures which express wholeness, and whenever we wish to express wholeness, we employ just such figures.

The right way to wholeness is made up of fateful detours and wrong turnings.

The attainment of wholeness requires one to stake one's whole being. Nothing less will do; there can be no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises.

The mandala is an archetypal image whose occurrence is attested throughout the ages. It signifies the wholeness of the self. This circular image represents the wholeness of the psychic ground or, to put it in mythic terms, the divinity incarnate in man.

Wholeness is not achieved by cutting off a portion of one's being, but by integration of the contraries.

An old alchemist gave the following consolation to one of his disciples: No matter how isolated you are and how lonely you feel, if you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come and seek you.

In the last analysis, the essential thing is the life of individual. This alone makes history, here alone do the great transformations take place, and the whole future, the whole history of the world, ultimately springs as a gigantic summation from these hidden source in individuals.

Individuation is to divest the self of false wrappings.

What happens after death is so unspeakably glorious that our imagination and our feelings do not suffice to form even an approximate conception of it. The dissolution of our time-bound form in eternity brings no loss of meaning.

And what shall we know of this life on earth after death? The dissolution of our timebound form in eternity brings no loss of meaning. Rather, does the little finger know itself a member of the hand.

In such doubtful matters, where you have to work as a pioneer, you must be able to put some trust in your intuition and follow your feeling even at the risk of going wrong.

There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.

If you want to understand the jungle, you can't be content just to sail back and forth near the shore. You've got to get into it, no matter how strange and frightening it might seem.

Magic is the science of the jungle.

I thought perhaps she was crazy, but she was only highly intuitive.

In actual life it requires the greatest discipline to be simple, and the acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook upon life.

If you cannot understand why someone did something, look at the consequences--and infer the motivation.

Medicines cure diseases, but only doctors can cure patients.

Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.

Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology. He would be better advised to abandon exact science, put away his scholar's gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart through the world.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

I am no longer alone with myself, and I can only artificially recall the scary and beautiful feeling of solitude. This is the shadow side of the fortune of love.

The greater the contrast, the greater the potential. Great energy only comes from a correspondingly great tension of opposites.

The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows it to realize its supreme purpose through him.

The greatest potential for growth and self-realisation exists in the second half of life.

The heaping together of paintings by Old Masters in museums is a catastrophe; likewise, a collection of a hundred Great Brains makes one big fathead.

The highest, most decisive experience is to be alone with one's own self. You must be alone to find out what supports you, when you find that you can not support yourself. Only this experience can give you an indestructible foundation.

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth.

Sensation tell us a thing is. Thinking tell us what it is this thing is. Feeling tells us what this thing is to us.

Nature seemed to me full of wonders, and I wanted to steep myself in them. Every stone, every plant, every single thing seemed alive and indescribably marvelous. I immersed myself in nature, crawled, as it were, into the very essence of nature and away from the whole human world.

One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games.

The more uncertain I have felt about myself, the more there has grown up in me a feeling of kinship with all things.

Be grateful for your difficulties and challenges, for they hold blessings. In fact... Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health personal growth, individuation and self-actualisation.

There is no such thing as a pure extrovert or a pure introvert. Such a man would be in the lunatic asylum.

The creative mind plays with the object it loves.

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.

The ability to ask questions is the greatest resource in learning the truth.

Everything psychic is pregnant with the future.

Becoming conscious is of course a sacrilege against nature; it is as though you had robbed the unconscious of something.

Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

Neurosis is the natural by-product of pain avoidance.

The conscious mind is a bad judge of its own situation and often persists in the illusion that its attitude is just the right one.

Where your fear is, there is your task.